Dole Sunshine Company (DSC) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) have joined forces for a new venture that will transform fruit side-streams into specialty ingredients.
The new venture, Dole Specialty Ingredients (DSI), will launch with an initial co-investment of $10 million by DSC and EDB New Ventures, the corporate venture arm of EBD.
DSI will focus on sourcing and transforming fruit side streams and unutilised fruit parts by repurposing them into high-value natural products like enzymes, extracts, seed oils and fibres.
“We will transform all fruit losses and unutilised fruit side-streams into high-value, natural products for highly profitable, less volatile product categories through innovation. This way, fruit losses are upcycled instead of being left behind or sent to landfills,” says Pier Luigi Sigismondi, DSC’s president, food and beverages group.
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DSI plans to repurpose 1 million megatonnes of banana and pineapple waste from Dole’s plantations based out of the Philippines. The core team of DSI will be based in Singapore and will continue to build capabilities with talent around food science, biotechnology, research and development and more. It will also create a social enterprise program with local partners like cooperatives and farmers benefiting the local community at large.
DSI will be led by managing director Weitze Ooi.
In addition to investing funds, a full-time venture building team from EDB New Ventures was dedicated to co-build the venture for two months alongside DSC.
“We are pleased to partner with DSI, which will leverage the supply chain advantages that Dole Sunshine Company brings to capture the market opportunity for sustainably-sourced natural ingredients with distinct functionalities,” says Choo Heng Tong, executive vice president, new ventures and innovation at EDB.
The Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR) also contributed to the launch of DSI, by embedding five scientists from the Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI) and the Institute for Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES) alongside the EDB venture building team.
Photo: Ariel/Unsplash
